Fascinating Language Facts You Didn’t Know Noam Chomsky once said, “A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.” It no wonder why we are so fascinated by language. So here are some […]

20 Bizarre Insults From Around The World Just The Flight has collected twenty insults from around the world and put them into one handy infographic, in case you find yourself in a foreign country and aren’t sure how to insult people.

These Comics Compare Chinese Culture With Western Culture Through Everyday Life “My name is Siyu. I was born and raised in Beijing, and I’ve spent last 10 years traveling, studying and working abroad in the US, UK, and France. Many people that I met were curious about China, but their impressions of China would end […]

Back-and-forth exchanges boost children’s brain response to language Study finds engaging young children in conversation is more important for brain development than “dumping words” on them. At the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, John Gabrieli’s lab is studying how exposure to language may influence brain function in children.

This Comical Map Shows What Each Country Leads The World In Everyone thinks there’s something that they’re the best at. With the aid of this rather impressive map, website DOGHOUSEDIARIES has put this to the test. They collected information from various sources and sprinkled in some quirkier rankings since many countries led the world in multiple things. […]

Things Bilingual People Do According to Steven Linn, being bilingual is about one of the coolest skills in life. In this video he demonstrates how some of his bilingual friends do things just a bit differently than the rest of the world..

Study Says Alcohol Improves Foreign Language Skills Researchers in the Netherlands and England found that consuming a small amount of alcohol made it easier to speak a foreign language. The study consisted of 50 German students studying abroad in the Netherlands. Each student had to communicate with native Dutch speakers. Although none of the […]

Cultural Torture: A Guide On How To Annoy People In Different Countries If you ever were curious how to annoy people in their own countries, Cale the artist behind the webcomic “Things In Squares” has you covered. 1. Things In Squares 2. Things In Squares 3. Things In Squares 4. Things In Squares […]

Coining new languages Gaia Vince celebrates the newcomers in our evolving linguistic landscape. Every year humanity loses 30 to 50 languages. Of the roughly 7,000 languages we still have, just 10 account for half of the world’s speakers. It seems inevitable to me that eventually the world will use one single language – Spanish, perhaps, […]

Why being bilingual helps keep your brain fit Most people in the world speak more than one language, suggesting the human brain evolved to work in multiple tongues. If so, asks Gaia Vince, are those who speak only one language missing out? In a café in south London, two construction workers are engaged in […]

Your biggest barrier to effective language learning? Translating Hello fellow language learners! Here’s Theo, currently struggling padawan in the process of learning French and proud owner of an unhealthy obsession for languages: I speak Romanian, German, English, and in-progress Spanish and French. Some of these I’ve learnt as a child, others later in my

Why being bilingual helps keep your brain fit Most people in the world speak more than one language, suggesting the human brain evolved to work in multiple tongues. If so, asks Gaia Vince, are those who speak only one language missing out? In a café in south London, two construction workers are engaged in

Where is language in the brain? Language is all around us but where does it sit inside us, and will we ever be able to ‘read’ our brains? Gaia Vince investigates. If you read a sentence (such as this one) about kicking a ball, neurons related to the motor function of your leg and